


Drawing In Nebulae

by bladeCleaner



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Gen, hints of rosejade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-07
Updated: 2014-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-07 20:24:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1124013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bladeCleaner/pseuds/bladeCleaner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jade and Calliope: PLAY DICE WITH THE UNIVERSE.</p><p>(Alternatively: the one where two Space babes go crazy with crayons.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drawing In Nebulae

**Author's Note:**

  * For [caddyl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/caddyl/gifts).



> ps you guys should listen to this mix  
> i was listening to it on repeat while writing this  
> http://8tracks.com/schellibie/saviors-of-the-dreaming-dead-a-jade-calliope-mix

JADE: what is with this stage?  
JADE: is it from one of your memories?  
CALLIOPE: no.  
CALLIOPE: i thoUght it was yoUr memory?  
JADE: i dont think so  
JADE: it would seem to be some sort of imaginary figment that turned into a real object  
JADE: i wonder why it looks like a drawing?  
CALLIOPE: shrUg.

Jade’s dragging you center stage and pressing through the velvet curtains, ablaze with excitement. 

“C’mon, Callie, I want to try something.”

“What did you have in mind?”

She presses the base of her foot on the wooden floor. “Callie, you built this space, right?”

“No-I just searched through the metaphysical plane until I found a place that was most hidden away from my brother.”

“Your brother?”

“Oh, he’s just a dreadful brute,” You say, trying to make your voice steady. “I’ll extrapolate about him later.”

“Um, okay. Well, if you had, I wanted to know if you made it malleable! Since you are a space player, after all,” she teases, waggling her eyebrows and grinning.

“Oh, it would be wonderful,” you sigh. “Anything to liven up this dull blankness.”

She scrunches up her face and thinks for a while. Then her ears perk up. 

“I just thought of something. This imaginary stage is a drawing that became real. Does that mean we draw something and it becomes real here?”

“Gosh, I don’t know, Jade. It seems like a leap.”

“We can at least try!”

She goes up to the stage set-the backdrop is a flower field lit up by the sun-and pulls it down, revealing a blank slate. 

There’s a crayon box on the floor and she picks it up, starts with a single bold stroke of blue. It takes her a few more strokes, then she's in it with an almost intimidating gusto. She almost pierces through the canvas and picks up another crayon-she's ambidextrous, whoa. Green and blue start melding together. A picture of a night soaked forest starts to form, and she picks up the red crayon after she’s done making a flowing river. 

She draws a singular, striking red insect on a leaf.

Finally done, she stumbles back a little. She makes a picture frame with her fingers and angles it so that the whole picture is contained in between her colored hands.

You breathe, “Oh, wow.”

"They're called ladybugs," she says softly. "They’re my favorite land dwelling anthropod."

"They're really pretty," you say. "Beautiful creatures."

She grins, toothy and young. Then she claps a hand over her mouth and her eyes go wide. For a minute you think your disguise has fallen off and the entire bubble feels like its fallen off the face of any kind of reality. Then she slides open her fingers a little and says through hushed lips, the sound whistling through finger gaps, "Callie, _look_!"

You spin around. The empty vortex around you is clicking dark. At first it seems to be shading blue until you notice the faint outlines of trees and the shape of a crisp half-moon in the sky, scattered with clouds.

You hear your own breath escape through your fangs. It's Jade's drawing.

"You did it! Jade, you did it."

She shrugs, though her eyes are shining. "It was just a lucky guess!"

The air is fresh on your skin. You've only had the gentle breezes of Prospit's rotations to tell you of wind and motion-here the wind billows and surges in unmitigated tides. You suck in gusts, feeling the humidity of each atom. You're a Space player who's never had the playground to practice in and there's a brutality and precision in the way you can pinpoint the dimension of every leaf, tree, lizard, ladybug in the open air. You like it.

Jade reaches up and scribbles something on her human ears with the red crayon. She's drawn ladybug earrings on. They glimmer when she twirls around, flicking her hand with the white crayon as she goes. She spirals in a cloud of glitter and emerges without her God Tier hood-dress. She's wearing a white spaghetti-strap dress, her stockings and ruby slippers still on.

You laugh: you don't know how much light the sound of it makes but she looks at you with a grassy sort of delight, all smeared in emerald. She's so beautiful and foreign-muddled it's like you've only ever seen flesh like hers in real-time, not through lower quality cam-feed. It's dizzying. You're dazed with how real she is.

She twirls her head around again in a flit of stardust and you grab at her wrists without thinking.

"Oh, gosh, pardon me, Jade, I didn't mean to be so-um-forward-?"

"No, no, it's ok! What is it?"

You wring your claws like an anime princess. Dirk would approve.

"Could you-could you show me your world? The way it was? Before the game?"

Her green eyes soften.

"I didn't get to see much of it where I was, I'm sorry," she says. Then she perks up and raises a hand out into the existing dreamscape.

Her entire being shimmers.

"I can show you what I did see, though! Hold on tight, Callie!"

"Jade? What are you doing?"

Her eyes are alight with terrible green fire.

She looks back at you with a grin as wide as an ocean.

"Pchoooo!"

\--

You're standing underneath a starry sky on top of a towering structure. You touch your sleeves self-consciously and pat your forehead. White hair still tumbles down from the crown of your head. Safe. 

"This is-where Jake lives," you say.

"Where I lived."

“How did we get here?”

“The forest I drew was the one on my island! I took a guess that the rest of it was here. This is amazing, Callie. It’s just like the outside of my home. The mechanism must be extracting memories from my psychic signature.”

"It's lovely, Jade."

Outside. The word alone makes you sway. Somewhere along the way your brother never got taught how big the world was outside your cage, really, outside of your brain-and you've never been able to forget.

UU: GLuED TO YOuR DuMB SCREENS AGAIN, SISTER?  
UU: WHAT A WASTE OF SPACE YOu ARE.

The world around you-it's stunning. You were trapped in void for so long and now you think you can hear mammalian sounds and reptilian croaks. You can see the vivid velvet blue sky above you.

Every star seems soaked in sugar, and you almost reach out for a taste. It seems like blasphemy.

Jade's twisting her fingers through yours, though, teleporting and bracing you against the grass rush before you can ponder your doubts. You pass through under the shadows of tree leaves, trying to smell something past the flowers before you're hit with moisture.

A lake stretches before you. A desecrated, dilapidated frog temple towers. A witch, splashing around in the waters with her dress held up above her knees.

You linger by the lip of the lake, watching her ankles disappear and reappear under the glittering water like a flickering monitor. You dare not even dip your toes in fear of exposing your true self.

She's shiny: a Mary Sue, in some aspects, but something different altogether. It jolts like a lightning bolt: she's not a character behind slid glass.

By the time you realize this, she's sopping wet from waist down. The way she's looking at you now is wolf-like, narrow and intent.

Then she launches herself at you with all the force of an incoming bullet and the noise of a planet imploding.

"Jade!" You scream, surprised and amused, as she soaks through your dark green pantsuit.

"Oh no, your nice clothes," she says without a hint of slyness. You almost roll your eyes.

"Playing the innocent, eh? I'll have you know these were the finest threads!"

"You sound like Dave. Bluhh. Okay then, as your fairy godmother, I'll transform you."

"Like sailor moon?"

She beams. "Yes, exactly."

She gives you a whirl and as you spiral you feel your suede pantsuit fade away. Then when you stop, you look down. You're wearing standard troll accoutrements: black shirt with your sign emblazoned on the chest and grey pants. Slouchy and informal.

When you look up at her she's as grey as you are in the paint. There's horns on her, delicate pointed things that look a handspan long and candy corn colored. She's wearing a plain grey skirt with a buttoned up side-slit and a black shirt with the atom symbol on.

"Clearly there is only one thing to do now."

"Roleplay!"

\--

"-towards her in a clearly seductive manner-" she says with a self-aware, almost ironic swagger in her steps, and you lean forward to kiss her before you realize you're still in the mask.

You freeze until there are no more parts of you left to still.

"Callie?"

Her words are soft and her proximity too distracting. You wheel away quickly and say, "Ah-sorry, jade, got out of character. Shall we postpone this delightful session for another opportune time?"

Your brother mocks you from inside your head.

UU: YOu ALWAYS GO BACK TO WORDS. HIDING YOuR PATHETIC WEAKNESS BEHIND YOuR FuCKING uNTOWARD MANNERISMS. YOuR RANCID RAMBLING. HOW THEY STAND YOu IS BEYOND ME. IF I SHOWED THEM YOuR MuG IT WOuLD BE THE NAIL IN YOuR SARCOPHAGI. 

"It doesn’t matter to me about your real face, Callie,” she murmurs. “I think you’re beautiful with or without the mask.”

“You say that,” you waver, “You say that without knowing.”

“Do you trust me?”

“…yes.”

She slowly removes your wig, first, to see if you protest. Your body’s seized up, but you don’t utter a word.

She takes off the mask slowly and when your skin hits air you gasp, and she grins at you once you’ve gathered the courage to open your eyes.

“You don’t look horrified,” you whisper.

“Nope! You are cute as heck.” She whispers back, as if you two are in on a well-kept secret. 

“But-but I’m a monster.”

She splays her digits across your chest bone, trying to feel the pulse of your heart muscle.

"A monster wouldn't have such a healthy heart rate!" She declares cheerfully, after ticking some mental box in her head.

Just like that, just like that, she bewitches you.

When she kisses you, you see nebulae knitting behind your eyelids.

You giggle against her mouth.

“Why, Jade!” you say, fluttering your eyelids. “We barely know each other. This is all so quick.”

Eyes closed, you can feel her smile on your skin. “Then let’s remedy that!”

"Where to next?"

"To know me, you've got to know my best friends in the whole wide world."

\--

She takes you to the front of John’s house. It’s suburbia at its finest; picket fence after picket fence. She shows you his tire swing and his pogo ride. From the stories she tells you, you gather that he is quite the joker!

“My brother is a fuckass,” she says fondly, “and he has horrible taste in movies and a stupid face.”

You look at her quizzically.

“Well no, he’s actually pretty great and no one can hope to beat him in a prank-off. He is simply the best there is.”

“He sounds like quite the fellow, Jade.”

“Yeah, I kind of miss him. Isn’t that stupid?”

“No, not at all. He sounds like a good enough brother to be missed.”

\--

The next place she takes you is Dave’s rooftop. Even draws tiny air conditioning units and chuckles to herself.

She stands near the edge and looks over the city.

She’s quiet for a while and you begin to think something’s wrong until she sighs with a smile. Weary, but a smile nonetheless.

“Nah,” she says, seemingly to herself. “You’ll meet him, I’m sure. There’s not much I can say about him now that would fit right, really.”

“Jade?”

“A coolkid lived here. His name was Dave and he’s still my very best friend,” she says. “You’ll see what I’m talking about, he’s super-cool.”

\--

Then, finally, she takes you to a snow-capped hill. The house there is white and bleeding-edge minimalist, a monolith of ebony.

She tells you all about Rose.

"She used to tell me stories. We used to trade fairy tales, rose and I, and dreams and riddles…”

“She does this thing, this prickly cactus thing whenever you say something about her that’s too true.”

“She has the loveliest eyes and her hair is really light, like if you’d bleached it several times, but it’s her natural hair color and her favorite animal is the octopus…”

She pauses eventually to catch her breath.

“How long have you two been matesprits?”

Her entire face goes red. It’s actually quite interesting to see. You don’t think you’ve seen anyone else except Jane turn that shade before.

“Oh gosh, no, we’re not-like that.”

“Jade!”

“What?”

“You’re obviously very infatuated. Even an alien such as I can recognize the tell-tale signs.”

“Well…I guess I don’t know what’s going on between us.”

“Excuse my presumption, Jade, but it is quite clear…”

She presses knuckles to her mouth. “MAYBE I have been thinking not so platonic thoughts about one Miss Lalonde. But it’s not like that matters!”

You flip her hand over and draw a heart on her hand with a gentle claw.

“You should tell her, while you’re still alive,” you say. “Time is always short.”

Something in her defensive expression softens. “I’ll consider it.”

\--

You pick the next place.

Dirk’s beach. He used to come here and swim when he was old enough to build his own boat away from his house. It’s just beginning to dawn.

“I never thought I’d get to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Have my own body, see what Earth was like; for me it was always waiting for the inevitable. Die or win and escape the chains. Live out the rest of my days on a dying sun, trying to find another like me.”

“I think we were both in love with our stories," she says, head on your shoulder. "Maybe it's time to write our own."

You slide your face into her hair and breathe.

She burbles and her palm’s a little shaking bit of warmth on your cheek.

“Mmn,” you say. “Shall we draw ourselves new worlds? Play God, and incur the wrath of those who set out our paths before us?”

You wince a little at the last question. Perhaps you listened too well to Dirk ranting about Yaldaboath.

Jade throws a fist up in the air as if mocking the sun and you turn to her, surprised.

“I say heck yeah- _bring it on_.”


End file.
